Within 72 hours-about the time it took for 7,000 planes to fly in and out of the world's busiest airport-a gubernatorial candidate said she favored new runways at O'Hare; a delegation of suburban mayors flew to Springfield to ask Republican leaders what they thought of that; a DuPage County court decision that Chicago had to pay for reducing O'Hare's "noise nuisance" was announced; and the usually warring factions from Chicago, the Federal Aviation Administration, O'Hare and several airlines met with Arlington Heights officials to seek solutions.

"I expect it will just be more talk," Arlene Mulder, village president of Arlington Heights, accurately predicted before the Wednesday night meeting. "But at least we will be talking."

Perhaps the biggest bombshell was Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dawn Clark Netsch saying that she would support new runways at O'Hare, a statement anathema to most suburbs around the airport.

"It's become a campaign issue, signed, sealed and delivered," crowed Jim Bray, chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra, the point man for Gov. Jim Edgar in the jet-noise fight.

Peter Giangreco, Netsch's campaign spokesman, said the candidate's words had been twisted.

"Dawn is open to whatever it takes to build a consensus," Giangreco said.

The Suburban O'Hare Commission, a consortium of 12 Cook and DuPage County suburbs and DuPage County itself, sent its executive committee to Springfield the day after Netsch's statement was reported.

In a prepared statement, commission chairman John Geils said that "any candidate who advocates new runways at O'Hare will pay the penalty at the ballot box in November."

Arlington Heights is not part of Geils' commission, largely because the village of 78,000 objects to paying $1 per resident for membership dues when only the southern tip of the village is severely affected by noise.

So village officials do their own studies, hold their own meetings and, critics say, sometimes try to manipulate O'Hare's operations to benefit themselves to the detriment of other suburbs.

"We're not at odds with Arlington Heights or anybody else," Geils said. "But their solution is to redirect (air) traffic away from Arlington Heights, to move more noise around."

Stacy Sigman, design planner at Arlington Heights and liaison to the Village Advisory Committee on O'Hare Noise, denied that the village advocates "shifting the noise to someone else just to get it away."

"Both we and the commission are concerned about the impact of noise on residents around O'Hare," Sigman said. "Sometimes we have taken different tacks, but for the most part we agree on goals."

Edgar, who has veto power over any new O'Hare runways, has said he would oppose them unless there are concessions made to ease flight traffic.

His administration supports a third airport near Peotone, and it has directed $2 million in state money to be spent on a required environmental impact study of the site.

Giangreco called the Peotone plan "a white elephant in the middle of a cornfield, an unworkable solution," and insisted that new runways at O'Hare are needed now to reduce delays and keep jobs, a statement echoed by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

But Kustra, whose Park Ridge home is under one of O'Hare's flight paths, said a third airport is essential because the noise and delays "are all due to a postage-stamp-size piece of property being deluged with more than 850,000 flights a year. One or even two more runways there won't solve that."